Monday 24th November 2025

24th November 2025

Monday 24^th November

SHE SAID:

After dropping Ang off at her work, we headed a couple of kms down the road to meet a local orchid nut. John was very friendly & keen to show us his orchid collection before we went for a walk on the Te Henui Trail behind his house.

He told us there are 17 different orchids that flower here, though we only saw 2 in flower today.

We had a cuppa with John & hit the road north for the Naumi Hotel near Auckland Airport, a 550km-ish trip with 11 sets of roadworks along the way!

We ate at the hotel & had an early night.

Tutkiwi Greenhood & Paka-Waka Orchids

New Zealand scenery

Hotel Naumi 

HE SAID:

What is it about showers here in New Zealand. Nearly everywhere has a different arrangement. Some of them are odd. Some of them are stupid. The shower at Ang and Tony's was the only normal one we encountered. One shower had a small hot/cold lever around the spout where it joined the wall at head height. Another one had a single wheel/knob that had colours and words for adjusting the temperature that did not line up with the marker, so we had no idea what to expect, and struggled to turn off. Another had almost black wall tiles at about a 45 degree angle instead of horizontal/upright, so that the orange (that's right - orange) grout made the walls appear corrugated and were a little unsettling, and added to this the tap was 2m from the shower head, on the opposite wall, so that you couldn't check the water temp if you were at the tap, nor could you adjust the tap while still getting wet. Odd all around!